How Newegg crushed the "shopping cart" patent and saved online retail - <AUTHOR> http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/01/how-newegg-crushed-the-shopping-cart-patent-and-saved-online-retail/ <comment><USER3> I founded NetMarket [1], which actually did build the first shopping cart on the web in August 1994, 5 months before OpenMarket launched and filed their application. I was deposed in the 2004 Amazon case due to an email Amazon discovered from Open Market to NetMarket demonstrating that they were aware of our site. Unfortunately, I didn't have screen shots or source code definitively demonstrating our work, and Amazon decided to settle for $40 M.

My congratulations to Newegg for their courage and resolve in standing up to Soverain. At NetMarket, we were proud of ourselves for figuring out after a few days that we couldn't put the state of the shopping cart items in the URL, since you lost it with the back button, and so we needed to use a state ID in the URL as a key to the database. The idea that this was patentable was and is absurd.

[1] [http://news.cnet.com/E-commerce- turns-10/2100-1023_3-5304683...](http://news.cnet.com/E-commerce- turns-10/2100-1023_3-5304683.html)

<comment><USER4> I'm interested in learning more. Are you saying that one should deliberately take and store screen shots to document the chronological use of various technologies? Would screen shots have been pivotal or simply one more checkbox item?

<comment><USER5> The lack of durable documentation of prior art is a large part of what keeps frivilous software patents valid. It would be difficult to establish the date and authenticity of screenshots, tho. You're usually looking for printed material like magazines or manuals.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> These were Open Market's patents? OM tried to get us to license one of them in about 1997. They didn't try very hard though. I told the OM guy who called me that I thought the patent was invalid, and he said "ok" and then asked if we were hiring.

<comment><USER7> Yes, Soverain's patents were originally from OM. I think the path was roughly something like this: OM->Divine Interventures->(holding entities)->Soverain.

'492 assignment history: [http://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&pat=59...](http://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&pat=5909492)

'314 assignment history: [http://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&pat=57...](http://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&pat=5715314)

Soverain patents by assignment: [http://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&qt=asn...](http://assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/q?db=pat&qt=asne&reel=&frame=&pat=&pub=&asnr=&asnri=&asne=soverain&asnei=&asns=)

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> It seems unfair somehow that our whole industry benefits from Newegg individually taking on the risk and expense of bringing a patent to litigation and appeal. Maybe more patents would be challenged if there were more cooperative efforts to bust bad patents.

<comment><USER9> Dont worry about that: developing a reputation for aggressively fighting patent trolls has the effect of dissuading trolls from targeting newegg in the first place. Trolls are likely to target others for a quick settlement rather than risk losing their golden goose at trial (as happened here).

<comment><USER10> And this long-term view is, I suspect, how NewEgg justifies the short-term risk of losing a trial. Never negotiate with terrorists.

<comment><USER11> SOYLENT TERRORISM IS CORPORATE PEOPLE!

<comment><USER12> If you think "Don't negotiate with terrorists" is just overdramatizing, then you've misread. It's actually a reference to an interesting bit of theory about deterrence. A country which has a history of negotiating with terrorists will tend to get more terrorists making demands of them. Conversely, a country which steadfastly refuses to ever negotiate, _even when this hurts them,_ will not get as many terrorist demands.

This kind of reasoning also applies to border skirmishes, contract disputes, and patent trolls.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> It seems that almost all patent troll cases are tried in the East District of Texas because that district had strongly favored plaintiffs. I'm then curious: if a US company refused to do business with Texas citizens -- citing an inhospitable litigation environment or some such -- could they still be brought to court in EDTX?

Continuing the thought experiment, what if companies continued to do business but added a surcharge to products shipped to troll-favorable districts? It seems that the jurors in those areas would be more intimately aware of patent trolls if they had to pay a 1% extra fee when they ordered Avon products.

I'm sure some companies do such a thing and just bundle it up with the cost of the product itself, but I'm curious if any companies took a more forceful stance.

<comment><USER14> It's a Federal court -- you can't avoid jurisdiction just by not doing business in TX.

My understanding is that it's the trolls that open offices in Tyler just so that they can file the suit in that district. I.e. the plaintiff is dragging the defendant into TX, and the defendant can't avoid that court.

<comment><USER15> Any court, federal or otherwise, has to have personal jurisdiction over the defendant ([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_jurisdiction#Principle...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_jurisdiction#Principles_of_personal_jurisdiction_in_the_United_States)). The rules are somewhat complex, but it should at least theoretically be possible to avoid being hauled into court in EDTX by not doing business there, blocking customers from there, etc.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> From the article:

"The American justice system has issues, but it fundamentally works. The jury system is sound. Juries are people of good will and have common sense."

This system "fundamentally works" if you have the money to make it work for you. Most individuals, small and medium businesses simply cannot afford the cost of seeking justice. In my opinion this is true of civil, business an criminal law.

Example:

Back when I was younger and far dumber I client stiffed me for about $125K of work. Of course, off I went to a lawyer. By the time I spent about $8,000 in legal fees I realized that all I was doing was paying for my attorney and their attorney to write what I came to call "love letters" to each other. I called them "love letters" because every time they wrote one, regardless of content, they got paid handsomely by both parties. I decided to lick my wounds and move on. Good thing I did. The client ultimately filed for bankruptcy protection and stiffed a bunch of other businesses out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. They formed a new corp pretty much in parallel and have been operating ever since.

Would money have made a difference here? Maybe. Don't know. I had a similar situation with a large (multi-billion dollar global corp) that cause us huge damage. There was simply no way to go after them without putting-up at least $500K in the bank for legal fees. Not a fight I could have considered. And so, even though they were decidedly in the wrong, they, effectively, "wrote their own laws" or were able to ignore them because they could fight a fight I couldn't even begin to consider.

What I do know is that it sure felt like there was a huge asymmetry in justice. It's almost like one can exist in this parallel universe where the practical result was that laws simply were not applied in the same way to those with less money to "buy" justice.

</comment><comment><USER16> I love the non-lawyerly language... "screw them, seriously, screw them". So refreshing to hear a corporate guy speak like a human being instead of a highly trained PR bot.

<comment><USER17> It's the Chinese way :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> > That was OpenMarket, a software company that originally created these > patents before going out of business in 2001.

Whenever exec's talk about needing to file patents for "self defense" I always think of cases like this. I don't know anything about OpenMarket, but I'm guessing they had similar logic. Then they go belly-up and these toxic patents make their way into a trolls portfolio.

No matter the company, IMHO, it's generally best to abstain from any patent fishing expeditions.

<comment><USER19> I actually worked for Open Market briefly back in 1998. Don't blame me, though. Open Market acquired my company, ShopSite, but they were already on a downward trajectory by that time, and I left to start another company before the year was out.

But I can report that the company was quite proud of its shopping cart patent, and its patent portfolio in general, largely because they felt that it protected them and established them as a major player in the nascent but growing e-commerce market. There was a sense, though, even then, that the patent was pure bullshit. I never heard any contemplation of using the patent offensively, and from what I can recall there was a feeling that if that were to happen, the same thing would happen to Open Market that happened to this patent troll. That is to say, that it wouldn't stand up.

Indeed, this is a good cautionary tale as to the havoc that "defensive" patents can wreak once they get into the hands of trolls.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> _The company won't hire law firms that take on patent troll cases, and its top lawyer, Lee Cheng, is vocal about his view that others should take the same approach._

Is there a site somewhere listing which firms represent patent trolls?

<comment><USER21> If there is a site, it will need to keep changing almost weekly. Trolls are notorious for closing up shop and starting new companies with new names and hiding behind subsidiaries. Likewise legal offices that work with them are very tight-lipped.

It's the software litigation equivalent of defending terrorists after all.

If a name is sold to another company and the index hadn't been updated, the new company and name will be at risk for misdirected rage.

</comment></comment><comment><USER22> Comparing patent trolls to bacteria would be an unforgivable and entirely unwarranted insult to bacteria everywhere. Even the plague bacterium deserves better.

We need to see alot more of this happening - hopefully this will show people there is another way to go, i.e. never ever settle with a patent troll, no matter how scary the alternative may seem to be. 3 patents invalidated but thousands to go. It is disgusting that these trolls managed to collect so much money before their garbage patents were ruled as such.

<comment><USER23> You will never win by directing your anger at the people who are just responding to the incentives provided by the system.

<comment><USER24> They are willfully responding, and that makes all the difference in the world.

<comment><USER25> What does that even mean?

<comment><USER26> They are not robots, they make choices. If I offered money to steal babies, that's an incentive. If someone did it and tried to defend themselves by saying "I was just responding to the incentive" that does not make them any less reprehensible.

<comment><USER27> Sadly, when people are offered money to steal babies they steal babies.[1] The moral outrage is important because it increases the cost of the action but removing the incentive is generally a more effective way to change behavior.

[1] [http://www.economist.com/news/china/21570762-curb- widespread...](http://www.economist.com/news/china/21570762-curb-widespread- trafficking-abducted-children-officials-and-parents-are-turning-social)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> We need more of this. A lot more. We also need to stigmatize law-firms willing to take-on patent troll clients.

Looking at the companies who got sued by these trolls one can only wonder why it is that these companies don't unite to create a legal and financial firewall of sorts to go against trolls each and every time they stick their heads out of the slime they live in. All you really need is for trolls to be summarily destroyed for a few years to create the conditions for change.

I have not bought anything from Newegg in a long, long time. Sometimes I almost instinctively just buy through Amazon. Now it will be different. Because I admire, respect and appreciate what Newegg did here I will do my small part and move whatever business I can their way. It's my own little way of saying "thank you" to a company that didn't just stand-up for themselves but rather for all of us.

Maybe if enough of us chose to vote with our cash more companies might be convinced to fight trolls rather than cave in.

</comment><comment><USER28> Great news. I was surprised to read that in a way similar to the Apple case against Samsung, the judge (in the Apple case, it was the foreman) told the jury to completely ignore the validity of the patents in District Court. It still makes absolutely no sense to me, so if someone could fill me in I would appreciate it.

I read that the judge said jurors would be confused... is this normal in any other type of case? Not a satisfying explanation.

<comment><USER29> No, I think you may be confusing some things here. Sometimes judges give juries instructions to ignore a particular part of a case when making findings for another part of the case. This makes it easier to rule on a case when it goes to appeal. For a patent trial, often the judge will instruct the juries to consider the issue of infringement alone, assuming that the underlying patents are valid, and then consider the validity question separately.

So on appeal, the appellate court can overturn a specific finding (i.e. one of the underlying claims are invalid) but not overrule the overall finding (i.e. the infringement finding is still valid because they found that if certain other claims were valid then the defendant did infringe).

This is obviously more complicated in practice because juries are supposed to only decide issues of fact and not issues of law - but in some cases it's difficult to say exactly what is law and what is fact. This is especially so in patent law, where the actual letters patent are supposed to be interpreted in light of the relevant patent legislation, and often turns on interpretation of words (which are questions of law).

This is, by the way, why patent trolls like jury trials. It's easy to bog down processes in these trials and confuse the jury.

As for the Samsumg case, that's complicated by a generally ignorant foreman who seems to have convinced fellow jurors that his interpretation of the law was correct.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Kudos to Newegg, but this system is sooo very broken and badly in need of reform.

Large established and heavily profitable organizations like Newegg might be able to pull this off, but what about all the small startups that are forced into bankruptcy by settling when the trolls come knocking? They don't have the resources to put up a fight. If larger companies tend to fight the tedious and expensive legal battles or avoid getting harassed by other companies by building up their own stash of patents that they can use to retaliate, in the long term what it really does is incentivize companies to go after larger numbers of smaller fish that can't put up a fight.

</comment><comment><USER31> To celebrate this I am going to go buy some expensive electronics from newegg.

<comment><USER32> I was gonna say, I might not shop around to save $3 next time NewEgg has something I want. Kudos to them.

<comment><USER33> I'll go one better -- I'm not going to shop around at all next time I want something NewEgg has.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> A victory for common sense, the tech industry, and right-thinking citizens everywhere. May the gods of the market continue to smile upon Newegg (a prosperous Lunar New Year to them!).

Points of interest to me:

Lee Cheng: _And we'll take a case through trial as a matter of principle because we want to accomplish the purpose of making good law. Like eBay did, like Quanta did when they challenged LG. It's part of our duty as a good corporate citizen to try to accelerate the rationalization of patent law._

This guy talks like a crusader for just law instead of an executive or business owner. You'd pretty never hear this from anyone in a public company, it just wouldn't be possible. More's the pity that most people can't really achieve big results like this; we have to retain ownership of our businesses in order to really live out our principles.

-

A commenter on Ars, on why no one else fought Soverain to the end:

 _I think the problem from most defendants' perspective is that they can just pass the costs along to their customers without facing any strategic disadvantage. Compared to its competitors, does Newegg winning this lawsuit give them any competitive advantage? After all, their competitors are no longer subject to paying for the invalidated settlements either.

By paying the settlements, the companies reinforce an awful system, but they also don't need to face the volatility and potential cost of a jury-trial in districts cherry-picked by the trolls. By going to trial, the defendant only stands to maintain patent troll cost parity with their competitors (if they win and invalidate their competitors' settlements)- or they lose and get hit with a judgment that could be extremely costly.

Further, in most organizations, management risks the ire of their shareholders should they elect to go to trial and lose. They're again put in a situation where their personal risks outweigh any benefits they stand to gain. Even for executives that consider themselves ethical, they can still rationalize that minimizing risk to the shareholders is the ethical decision._

-

This seems true enough - from a (rational) game-theoretic perspective, why should any victim really fight hard to overcome a troll, if in doing so they risk big losses, and don't gain any advantage over their competition _even if they win_? The main potential upside is that consumers and potential partners will view them more favorably and give them more business (as is happening now), but this is a very unreliable bet to make. The downsides of "doing the right thing" are very likely greater than the upsides.

The main motivator to fight the trolls has to be personal principle, and even then the principled person has to balance it against the real risks to his company and lifestyle. Newegg had the gumption and muscle to see the case to its end, but it was the lucky one, the one-in-a-hundred with the right attributes (principled owners, private ownership, deep pockets). We're not likely to see this kind of thing happen very often, with the odds stacked against what should be the right outcome.

And that's all the more reason to salute Lee Cheng, Fred Chang, and James Wu and their victory against profiteers in a flawed system. CEO Fred Chang probably deserves as many, if not more, accolades as Lee Cheng, for deciding as the major shareholder to take this battle to its end.

<comment><USER35> I understand that the recent pattern has been that settling with one troll brings more out of the woodwork.

Once that becomes common knowledge, I think it has to change the calculation. Settling is no longer about how much the troll in front of you is asking for; it's about the unknown number behind them in line, as well.

While it certainly sucks to have to bet your company to get these trolls to go away, if the alternative is for dozens of them to bleed you slowly dry, the bet may seem more worth taking.

<comment><USER34> Indeed, and this increased risk would make it an even greater imperative for potential victims to form or support a patent-busting cooperative as suggested by several commenters already - much like how some prey animals form defensive herds against hunting packs. Hopefully cases like these will push companies to band together and not remain tight-lipped like they were on the Soverain case (until Newegg broke the chain).

There's a coalition for the open Internet, why not a coalition for fair innovation in technology? (Perhaps in collaboration with the EFF's Defend Innovation initiative?)[1]

[1] <https://defendinnovation.org/>

edit: Interesting trivia from a legal news site:

<http://www.americanlawyer.com/digestTAL.jsp?id=1358711387829>

 _In Tuesday's decision, the Federal Circuit ruled that three of Soverain's core patents are invalid on obviousness grounds. "The district court's conclusion that a prima facie case of obviousness was not met is not explained by the court by Soverain, and does not accord with the record," the appellate panel ruled. "[T]he trial record contains extensive testimony of the experts for both sides, discussing every claimed element of the patented subject matter and the prior art system."_

If I understand this right, Judge Davis simply ignored all Newegg's testimony about prior art and ruled that they hadn't even made a prima facie case for obviousness. Thankfully the Court of Appeals didn't think so. I wonder if Davis was simply leaving the issue of patent validity to a higher court to decide, or if he really had a good legal reason to ignore prior art and the evidence for obviousness. The Soverain lawyer's blogpost provides an inside view on the 2010 case: [http://mcsmith.blogs.com/eastern_district_of_texas/2010/08/j...](http://mcsmith.blogs.com/eastern_district_of_texas/2010/08/jmol- rulings-in-soverain-v-newegg-damages-experts-future-royalties-jmol-standards- obviousness-etc.html)

In the end the jury's $2.5m award might not even have covered Soverain's legal costs, meaning that it wasn't a win for them either - more of a draw.

Reading the fresh Appeals opinion is interesting too: [http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/images/stories/opinions- orders/...](http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/images/stories/opinions- orders/2011-1009.Opinion.1-17-2013.1.PDF)

 _Precedent agrees with Newegg that a person of ordinary skill[2] could have adapted the CompuServe order command to known browser capabilities when these capabilities became commonplace, and that it was obvious to do so. The product identifier message term does not distinguish the shopping cart claims from the prior art CompuServe Mall._

Clearly sensible reasoning, not misled by technicalities and sophistry - <USER2> like it. The opinion is basically a no-nonsense slap-down of Soverain's arguments and Davis's ruling, which will no doubt restore your confidence in the justice system a little. It was surprisingly easy for a layman like me to read, too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This phrase alone makes me want to buy stuff there...

"For Newegg's chief legal officer Lee Cheng, it's a huge validation of the strategy the company decided to pursue back in 2007: not to settle with patent trolls. Ever."

</comment><comment><USER37> Surprising that so many companies paid so much money before NewEgg found and used the Compuserve prior art.

And it's a shame there isn't much cooperation between people attacked by patent trolls. It feels like there could be benefits of scale if you have 5 firms cooperating against a troll.

<comment><USER38> Yeah, a very obvious idea comes to mind - all affected by the same patent troll should pool resources to support at least one steadfast fighter in order to bust the troll, instead of spreading resources thin.

</comment></comment><comment><USER39> After a troll loses, do they have repay all money they gained from others?

<comment><USER40> You never know, one of those extorted licensees might not just be in it for the litigation immunity -- they might actually be using that ancient software...

<comment><USER41> Then they would pre-license and not need the litigation?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> I'm in the market for a new PC and now I'm definitely buying from Newegg.

<comment><USER38> I use them all the time when I need to buy some computer hardware. Except in cases when they don't have what I need. They have excellent customer service and return policy. And seeing that they have strong stance against patent trolls gives another good reason to support them.

</comment></comment><comment><USER43> I'm pretty amazed that the lawyers/consultants somehow came up with the Compuserve Mall as evidence.

<comment><USER44> Nothing is really new in software anymore. It only seems that way to people who are too young to recognize the old ideas that are being recycled.

<comment><USER45>
       What has been is what will be,
       and what has been done is what will be done,
       and there is nothing new under the sun.

       (Ec 1:9)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> Every internet retailer owes Newegg a really nice gift basket right now.

<comment><USER47> I suppose that means they'd be putting all their baskets in one Newegg.

<comment><USER34> I think I just gave you your 7000th karmapoint for that comment.

<comment><USER47> Looks like it. Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Really glad to see this, these costs to pay patent trolls would have been passed along to the consumer in some way.

Good job, Newegg!

</comment><comment><USER49> I can't even believe there WAS a shopping cart patent.

I mean, what?

How else are you supposed to do it?

I mean.. seriously? They patented the concept of keeping track of things a customer intends to buy?

If no one had ever done this before, how many people would arrive a this solution tomorrow?

It's not hard to implement and absurdly obvious to even think of.

<comment><USER50> these patent trolls are everywhere, whats worse is even the big names in the industry are doing similar things!!!

patents if anything should allow innovation but not be a bump on the way to innovation!!!

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> _...the patent-holding company was still able to hire another top law firm: Quinn Emanuel. That same law firm has done loads of defense work for Google and has become the search giant's go-to patent-troll killer; it's the same firm that defended Samsung in its blockbuster showdown with Apple._

This reminds me of the classic pre-emptive divorce maneuver Tony Soprano pulled: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentified_Black_Males#Episod...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unidentified_Black_Males#Episode_recap)

If you don't want to get sued by patent trolls, get all patent troll attorneys on retainer.

</comment><comment><USER52> Someone should create a website as a meeting point for those affected by patent trolls. Anyone affected can go on this website and look for their "peers" so they can pool their resources to fight off the evils.

</comment><comment><USER11> So the patents were invalidated because CompuServe did it first. The problem doesn't seem to be in any way improved. If CompuServe held the patents, this would still be a valid lawsuit, no?

<comment><USER45> Compuserve's prior art was in 1984, so if they had patents on it, they'd have expired in 2004.

I take your point though. Can you imagine having to pay royalties to Compuserve over a shopping cart in 2003?

<comment><USER53> Not necessarily. 20 years from application only just became the law. Compuserve would have been working under 17 years from grant. And, IIRC, they could have been evil and kept filing follow-on claims to delay grant until a time they though was advantageous (e.g. waiting until after Amazon became big).

You'd think that's crazy, but the universal search patent Apple is bedeviling Android with has a priority date that goes all the way back to 2000 (this is why Google Desktop Search is not the vaporizing prior art it should be), but wasn't actually issued until December 27, 2011! And if I understand the rules correctly, absent successful invalidation that means we're stuck with Apple "owning" universal search until almost 2029.

See: <http://www.google.com/patents/US8086604>

<comment><USER54> > 20 years from application only just became the law.

It became effective June 8, 1995: [http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2701.html#sect270...](http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s2701.html#sect2701)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> How does Newegg recoup the loss of time and money involved in raising this lawsuit?

Wouldnt it make sense for Hacker News to provide an affiliate URL to Newegg? After all, you wouldnt be shopping there if it werent for YC notifying you of their noble actions - YC is driving business to them and receiving no sales commissions.

</comment><comment><USER56> Anyone else read the article, see the picture of Lee Cheng and say to themselves, "damn I wish I was that guy"?

</comment><comment><USER57> Does this reverse the payments made by Amazon et al to date? Or will this troll lawyer lady keep sitting on the millions and looking for another way to do the same thing? Like going after smaller potatoes, but in much large numbers.

</comment><comment><USER58> Assuming Soverain does to have pay back prior settlements it was probably still a very lucrative business in extortion.

Is there a legal way to make them pay for their prior litigation? Or to force them to pay Neweggs legal fees?

<comment><USER59> I would imagine any monies that Soverain had collected have already been dispersed to benefactors and is untouchable. Newegg could possibly sue to get legal fees back but why bother? There's probably no money to be had.

</comment></comment><comment><USER60> I wonder what percentage of lawyers are actually ethical and wouldn't represent these trolls? Is there any blowback for their lawyers for representing something that was obviously a sham from the very beginning?

</comment><comment><USER61> Why hasn't there been a boycott of businesses in the East Texas district where all these judgments originate? Or at least some social action against Texas to try to shame them into behaving responsibly?

Could it gain traction?

<comment><USER59> So, you wish to punish an entire region of people because of the actions of a few?

Seems reasonable.

</comment></comment><comment><USER62> The U.S. needs patent law/tort reform- something to stop this nonsense without reputable companies having to pay millions to patent trolls. I'll definitely make sure to buy from newegg next Christmas.

</comment><comment><USER63> They did more to save online retail with just fighting a patent - they have excellent customer service.

Not quite as good as Amazon but way up there.

</comment><comment><USER64> Does anyone know if invalidating patents affects previous settlements? Could the company that settled sue for their money back?

</comment><comment><USER58> It's a shame that prior art was even necessary here. Isn't this plainly "obvious to anybody skilled in this field"?

</comment><comment><USER65> Why is East Texas a troll haven? Are companies donating money to schools or paying bribes?

</comment><comment><USER38> Kudos to Newegg for being steadfast and busting another greedy patent troll.

</comment><comment><USER66> "Screw them. Seriously, screw them. You can quote me on that."

Best quote of the day

</comment><comment><USER67> I'll be shopping at Newegg, now.</comment>


Unlocking an encrypted rootfs over ssh-server in initramfs - <AUTHOR> https://projectgus.com/2013/05/encrypted-rootfs-over-ssh-with-debian-wheezy/ <comment><AUTHOR> Well, yes - if you are using an encrypted rootfs on a server, the disk is permanently in an unlocked state - so it doesn't completely matter if encrypted or not. But don't forget, in some cases you don't want to have unencrypted data stored on a hard disk or a flash medium either. I guess another solution would be to have only parts of the system/data encrypted, but I think this way is more convenient.

Here is another article, describing a similar setup [0].

And here is a similar question on stackoverflow with plenty of answers [1] and some other tool mentioned.

[0]: [http://blog.neutrino.es/2011/unlocking-a-luks-encrypted- root...](http://blog.neutrino.es/2011/unlocking-a-luks-encrypted-root- partition-remotely-via-ssh/) [1]: [https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/5017/ssh-to- decrypt...](https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/5017/ssh-to-decrypt- encrypted-lvm-during-headless-server-boot)

<comment><USER2> > Well, yes - if you are using an encrypted rootfs on a server, the disk is > permanently in an unlocked state - so it doesn't completely matter if > encrypted or not.

It is very irresponsible to make statements like that. It is very common to have an attack, where the attacker gains access via social engineering to a server, and manages to restart the server and gain access to a rescue system.

And even then, nowadays renting servers is very common - how do you know you can trust everyone in the hosting company? FDE should be the default thing to do, especially for servers. I don't really understand why they aren't a standard practice already.

<comment><USER3> > It is very irresponsible to make statements like that.

I don't think so. It is irresponsible to suggest that you can secure a server you don't physically control. Full disk encryption doesn't protect your disk if someone can take a memory dump of the machine. Using sshd in an initramfs to receive the passphrase for an encrypted rootfs doesn't help if someone can modify the initramfs and wait for a the passphrase.

Encrypting your volumes does provide some security, but having to SSH into an initramfs to unlock the root partition has its own problems.

<comment><USER2> Nothing is ever 100% safe and everything has its own problems. Initramfs-based full disk encryption is easy and effortless to do, and the value is most definitely greater than the effort required. I know multiple of cases where a simple FDE would have helped to greatly reduce the harm done.

You can host your own servers, but even that is not 100% safe. Someone can break to your hosting space and inspect the servers. And that of course requires quite a deal of effort.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I've been toying with this idea for personal experimentation. My idea for an unattended unlock is to involve some sub-Rasberry Pi sized machine to be somewhere on the LAN that stores the key (or part thereof). That small machine would be on local WiFi and physically hidden, like under a sink.

</comment><comment><USER5> I think the author dismisses evil maid style attacks too lightly. It is true that its kinda difficult to protect against such attacks, but Secure Boot should raise the bar slightly.

<comment><USER6> Slightly? Considerably.</comment></comment>


Ask HN: What to do when a developer goes dark? - <AUTHOR> Recently I wanted to upgrade a n old (but successful) project and put out a request I was looking for outside help without giving out project details.  A good developer was interested and responsive.  I was interested in his skillset so I sent him the project, all upgrades I was looking to do in great detail.  I've tried to contact him several times since and I've not heard a peep from him.  Should I be worried that he liked it and would lock me out for his own version or could it be a case of disinterest (which I would assume at least a courtesy reply of "not interested")? <comment><USER2> I assume the only point of contact is his email address? I've had cases were the email bounced (mailbox full) and turns out if was 17 year old living with his parents that just didn't notice. In other bizarre case the recipient had a fatal car accident.

Regardless if not responding is by interest or an external factor you can only write another stronger-worded email and then move on.

</comment><comment><USER3> To me, there's little gain in making assumptions about the life circumstances of individuals one does not know intimately.

My advice is too move forward with other potential consultants. Perhaps consider working with the original developer again?

Good luck.

</comment><comment><USER4> It's safe to assume disinterest. That is the most plausible explanation.

If you wee worried about someone stealing your secrets you should have thought of that before you gave them away.</comment>


Show HN: SlicingDice – Serverless Data Warehouse - <AUTHOR> https://blog.slicingdice.com/slicingdice-is-now-live-b9a34589763f <comment><AUTHOR> SlicingDice co-founder here.

If anyone is interested to know more about our reasons for building SlicingDice or what is powering the service under the hood, these blog posts below are good starting points:

Why we built SlicingDice [https://blog.slicingdice.com/why-we-built- slicingdice-1beffc...](https://blog.slicingdice.com/why-we-built- slicingdice-1beffc643571)

SlicingDice Uncovered - Part 1 [https://blog.slicingdice.com/slicingdice- uncovered-part-1-in...](https://blog.slicingdice.com/slicingdice-uncovered- part-1-infrastructure-f6bc8f270781)

Happy to answer any questions about the service or infrastructure.

</comment><comment><USER2> Another SlicingDice co-founder here!

I would be happy to answer any questions about our own analytics database (S1Search)</comment>


Pathfinding with A* - <AUTHOR> http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/GameProgramming/ <comment><USER2> The Flash demo is pretty cool: [http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/game- programming/a-star-fl...](http://theory.stanford.edu/~amitp/game- programming/a-star-flash/test.html)</comment>


Release Notes for Safari Technology Preview Release 12 - <AUTHOR> https://webkit.org/blog/6928/release-notes-for-safari-technology-preview-release-12/ <comment><USER2> So, the fetch API is landing in Safari. I'm surprised, since the Safari implementation presumably still lacks the ability to abort a request as it does in Chrome.

Since the discussion on how to resolve this issue is ongoing[1], I thought they'd wait until a decision was reached.

Must be gearing up for Service Workers & Web Push — something I expected to be at the bottom of the priority list for Apple's browser.

[1] [https://github.com/whatwg/fetch/issues/27](https://github.com/whatwg/fetch/issues/27)

</comment><comment><USER3> Why do they post release information about Safari on webkit's site? I know, both are implemented/started/driven by Apple, but I would have expect webkit.org to be dedicated to the engine, only.

<comment><USER4> Safari is a fairly lightweight holster around the WebKit engine. The same technology is used in other components eg web views. So in order to demonstrate/test the new engine, it needs a placeholder to do that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> *broken record

But again, no sign of WebRTC in Safari's release (even though it's in Webkit, no?)</comment>


Master these five concepts to master React - <AUTHOR> https://medium.freecodecamp.com/the-5-things-you-need-to-know-to-understand-react-a1dbd5d114a3 <comment><USER2> Components and "higher-order component factory function". Waiting for "factory factories" and an iteration of Spring in Javascript.

I'm being a bit snide here since the Java community had to endure years of _uninformed_ ridicule regarding the meta gymanstics required for component oriented programming.

I remember talking to a react or backbone (or whatever, it was the current 'thing') developer 1.5 years ago and giving a brief history of GUI toolkit frameworks before browsers. I swear, his eyes lit up like I was spilling occult secrets. Back to the future, par per course in this forgetful field.

[p.s. it's not just the browser side people. Many years ago I mentioned in a Go community group to take a look at the Servlet architecture (circa ~2000) and its minimal but powerful abstractions. I think it was yesterday that we had people cheering "context" in Go 1.8.]

<comment><USER3> You know, this information isn't really readily available to us user interface people. At least, it's not obvious where to go to read about it.

I would love a brief history of GUI programming concepts and patterns if you could point to one.

<comment><USER2> Smalltalk: [http://www.create.ucsb.edu/~stp/PostScript/mvc.pdf](http://www.create.ucsb.edu/~stp/PostScript/mvc.pdf)

Fowler has a good overview of GUI architectures: [https://martinfowler.com/eaaDev/uiArchs.html#HumbleView](https://martinfowler.com/eaaDev/uiArchs.html#HumbleView) \- note that this is at this point dated and does not cover the 'reactive' model.

He also recommends this survey: [http://aspiringcraftsman.com/2007/08/25/interactive- applicat...](http://aspiringcraftsman.com/2007/08/25/interactive-application- architecture/) (Haven't read it myself.)

Java also used to have a funky toy like thing in the beginning called Bongo (by a company called Marimba). It was a bit of a toy, but I found it an interesting, if flawed, take on _scriptable_ GUIs. This is all I can dig up today: [https://people.apache.org/~jim/NewArchitect/webtech/1997/10/...](https://people.apache.org/~jim/NewArchitect/webtech/1997/10/note/index.html) (If anyone here knows where I can download Bongo I'd hugely appreciate it. It was really fun to play with.)

I haven't seen anything about 'design-surface' & 'design-time' in context of Javascript frameworks yet but I have a feeling that will happen in due course. Can't dig up anything that is not .NET specific but it is a generally applicable idea for component based systems. Think GUI builders in visual studio or NetBeans. This is more of interest if you want to create your own framework.

Component models are a huge topic.

In the beginning (NATO, 1968): [http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/NATO/nato1968.PD...](http://homepages.cs.ncl.ac.uk/brian.randell/NATO/nato1968.PDF)

Hope this is of use to you.

<comment><USER4> There's quite a few "component playgrounds" out there for React. Storybook is one, Carte Blanche is another, and there's a few more besides that.

A quick search turned up this list of several tools along that line: [https://github.com/xyc/til/tree/master/react/devtools](https://github.com/xyc/til/tree/master/react/devtools)

<comment><USER2> Good to know, thanks. I don't really follow the frontend tech anymore and obviously no longer buzzword compatible!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> If anyone's interested in learning React, I keep a big list of links to high- quality tutorials and articles on React, Redux, and related topics, at [https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux- links](https://github.com/markerikson/react-redux-links) . Specifically intended to be a great starting point for anyone trying to learn the ecosystem, as well as a solid source of good info on more advanced topics.

</comment><comment><USER5> Smart and dumb components are one of the reasons why I quickly jumped ship to Vue. It's too complicated and the starter apps make it worse. You get four level deep directory structures where each dir contains a single file of like five lines. It feels like knitting a castle.

Vue certainly has its own cruft, but it's at least somewhat simpler when it comes to how components compose.

<comment><USER6> Untiil there is a Vue Native. Vue.js will never be appealing to a lot of people.

<comment><USER7> It's in the works: > "Native Rendering The collaboration with Alibaba's Weex project has made some substantial progress. Our first major goal — making Vue 2 the actual JavaScript runtime framework on top of Weex's native rendering engine — has been completed in the latest 0.9.4 release. In 2017 there will be revamped documentations, better onboarding experience and API improvements based on feedback from the community and large-scale production use at Alibaba."

[https://medium.com/the-vue-point/vue- in-2016-8df71d98bfb3#.u...](https://medium.com/the-vue-point/vue- in-2016-8df71d98bfb3#.uzzbgq7wj)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Subjective content opinions aside, this article is short and to the point. Well written.

</comment><comment><USER9> These and 3rd party integration, I think.

HOC aren't to bad to know either, if you want to end up with maintainable code.

shameless plug: [https://github.com/kay-is/react-from- zero](https://github.com/kay-is/react-from-zero)

</comment><comment><USER10> Would you put "filling in the rest of the stack" as another finger of death? There doesn't seem to be good consensus on that bit.

<comment><USER11> Nor should there be a consensus. Back-end use cases are far more diverse than front-end use cases. Front-end frameworks should never prescribe the rest of your stack, IMHO.

<comment><USER10> I'm not a front end expert...but the variety of choices around filling the stack for react seems broader than it was in the past.

It feels like there's more risk in making the wrong choice. I see lots of regrets around redux, for example, adding more complexity than initially wanted. Or, selecting a tool that becomes abandonware, etc.

<comment><USER9> Yes, there are a bunch of regrets about Redux, but I have the feeling it got better last year.

In 2015 we had countless Flux implementations and most of them have been abandoned. I did an app with Flummox, for example and switched to Redux later.

But now? Redux and MobX are basically the major players and you can still do small to medium sized apps without them.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> React best practises question - At what level should event handlers be installed? At lowest level components or the highest level?

How are events in React supposed to be propagated from low level components to their parent components when the low level components should not have any knowledge of their parents?

<comment><USER4> By passing down callback functions as props. One of the basic patterns of React is that parents communicate to their children by passing down data as props, and they also pass down callback functions that a child can execute to communicate upwards.

There's a great article that describes various component communication patterns at [http://andrewhfarmer.com/component- communication/](http://andrewhfarmer.com/component-communication/) .

<comment><USER12> Thanks. Exactly what I was looking for.

<comment><USER13> Also, take a look at optional libraries such as redux (and its friends, e.g. redux-saga or redux-thunk). You don't have to use them, but when your codebase starts getting complicated with lots of callback, perhaps using those state management libraries would help.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> Good article besides the nonsense about some of the react lifecycles being voodoo. You will use it if you program extensively.

</comment><comment><USER15> > the component approach means that both HTML and JavaScript code live in the > same file.

Something about this makes me want to facepalm and wonder why we bothered with separation of concerns, when React just undoes all of that.

<comment><USER16> That's exactly what I thought when I started using it.

But as I've got more used to it, I'm not sure it's really an issue, or at least doesn't have to be.

Firstly, JSX isn't really HTML. It's a bit of syntactic sugar around JavaScript "createElement" functions. If you don't want to have something that looks similar to HTML in your JS, you don't have to.

Secondly, if you want dynamically generated HTML, you're going to need some form of logic embedded in there somewhere (loops, conditionals etc). Most template languages end up with their own directives, like Angular 2's "ngFor". The React answer is to use standard JavaScript for that control.

And if you then want to separate out the non-display logic, you can use a combination of "smart" (pure JS logic) and "dumb" (JS/JSX display) components, and treat the JSX files as templates. "Separation of concerns" in this context isn't about not mixing code and markup, it's about not mixing business and display logic, and there's nothing in React that stops you doing that.</comment></comment>


Show HN: Streaming thousands of data points in real time with redis and webgl - <AUTHOR> http://test.tensorfork.com <comment><AUTHOR> Being able to stream thousands of data points per second was challenging but satisfying. All of this data is being generated in real time, on a server. You can watch your training runs, to keep a pulse on them.

I had to fix webdis websockets; no one streamed so much data before.

All the data is also _stored_. Redis can handle as much data as you can throw at it. Theoretically I can view the entire history of every one of these streams. Every data point, at every step, with zero dropouts.

You lose so much information when you average losses over a batch.

Since this link will die eventually, you can find a video here: [https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vxwjh9gcc2U](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=vxwjh9gcc2U)</comment>


Why Microsoft Desperately Needs To Become More Acquisitive - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/27/why-microsoft-desperately-needs-to-become-more-acquisitive/ <comment><USER2> I worked for a company partnered with Microsoft for a while and it felt like they're trying to deny the cloud, open source projects, cheap software, applications, etc. etc.

For a tech company that was founded on innovation, they really haven't seemed to produce much lately.</comment>


Squid optimization guide from last.fm of all people - <AUTHOR> http://blog.last.fm/2007/08/30/squid-optimization-guide

<comment><USER2> Benchmarks don't backup many of these claims. Search "email@example.com squid performance" for my authority to make such a claim in the face of an extremely well-written blog post from a very smart fellow.

But the core bits of ReiserFS, raised file descriptors, and balancing RAM to disk are valid.

The aufs threads just aren't useful over about 24 even on the fastest machine --they are disk limited, not CPU bound. Squid is not multi-threaded, but there is a disk IO thread pool option (the aufs bit in the article). Going crazy with threads is counter productive and just eats memory.

Most of the configuration and proc options covered are just superstitious from a performance standpoint--they're generally fine at their defaults, and it's usually more productive to figure out what is binding performance and then turn the knobs with that knowledge rather than blindly cranking everything to eleven.

So, not a bad article, per se...but one that is rife with superstition. Squid brings it out of people like no other project I've ever seen (aside from maybe filesystems).</comment>


HomePods are staining wooden tables with a white ring - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/2/14/17012382/apple-homepod-white-ring-wooden-table-staining-issue-problem <comment><USER2> Apple is so most definitely going to release an Apple Coaster for $89.

<comment><USER3> Stain remover for $29 and soft clothes with apple logo on it for $19.99

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> How was this device never placed on a wooden surface before distribution? Oy vey.

<comment><USER5> It seems to be related to oiled porous wood surfaces and the HomePod's silicone base. Still odd that this would be missed.

[https://www.imore.com/how-to-stop-homepod-from-leaving- white...](https://www.imore.com/how-to-stop-homepod-from-leaving-white-rings- on-wood-furniture)</comment></comment>


Ask HN: review my Mailinator.com clone: Mailnesia.com - <AUTHOR>

Hi, I made a mailinator clone: MailNesia.com. Please send any feedback, comments, suggestions. Also check out the features page.<p>Thanks! <comment><USER2> Hey, that's cool! Always better to have the choice. :)

Some remarks: well, first, I tried it and it works, so that's a good point. Although the message appear twice on the page (email: ilikethat@mailnesia).

Are the emails deleted after a certain time? There seem to be no option to delete them yourself, as there is in Mailinator IIRC.

Edit: just saw on the feature page that they're deleted after two months.

Edit 2: "The size of a message can be 10 kilobytes at most." Isn't that a bit small? What happens to the larger messages, do they get silently dropped?

I like the service name too. Clever!

(Oh and it's a bit meta but on HN, submissions with text take a lot more upvotes to get (and stay) in the front page — you should submit it with a link to Mailnesia instead, and add the background information in a comment afterwards.)

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks for your comment and info!

The message no longer appears twice, it was displaying the text/plain and text/html parts which you can now select with javascript buttons.

I dont know if its too small, but currently only the first 10 kilobytes of a message is stored.</comment></comment>


Number of legal 18x18 Go positions computed. One more to go - <AUTHOR> http://tromp.github.io/go/legal.html <comment><USER2> Anyone here play? It is pretty much the ultimate boardgame. Its like game- theory the game. From the very start you are embroiled in interesting risk/reward and provoking you opponent to overextending type stuff. Great place to play is gokgs.com I actually cant play many strategy games anymore because I realize this is like go with a load of crap thrown on it. My friend and I call this 'false complexity' the game isnt really complex it just has loads of rules and random stuff to familiarise yourself with before getting into the game proper. Its not a great a comparison but I would say something like magic the gathering or Dota would be good contenders for most 'false complexity' attained in a game.

<comment><USER3> In Dota for example the false complexity is what allows someone with not so great analytical thinking but great knowledge of the complexity (items and hero combinations) to fare pretty well. It helps level the field. Although comparing go to RTS is extremely misleading. RTS's have pretty deep of what I call 'continuous tactics' where you need to plan an optimal control of your character with a continuum rather than discrete set of plays. It presents incredibly rich situations which you cannot explain with the kind of strategy you see in go or chess, for instance. The same goes for games like counter- strike, once you take into account limited aiming capability. I think it's beautiful how those games can hide this richness into a very fun game at low levels, and how they don't seem so hard just because we're so good at spatial reasoning and planning.

Here's an illustration:

[http://youtu.be/5e8HZqF3cyk?t=2m1s](http://youtu.be/5e8HZqF3cyk?t=2m1s)

I also like this quote by von Neumann:

"If people do not believe that mathematics is simple, it is only because they do not realize how complicated life is."

I confess I do wonder what would be the equivalent 'go of RTS games', where the minimal, essential dynamics are captured without all the bling.

<comment><USER4> It doesn't have the richness of Go but I believe [https://www.gnu.org/software/liquidwar6/](https://www.gnu.org/software/liquidwar6/) captures the essence of the "action/micro" side of RTSs.

<comment><USER5> I prefer the old [http://www.ufoot.org/liquidwar/v5](http://www.ufoot.org/liquidwar/v5) .

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Just because the number of legal positions is computed doesn't mean we're anywhere close to "solving" 18x18 Go, right? What's the utility of computing the number of legal positions?

<comment><USER7> One example that just occurred to me: The base 2 log of the number of legal positions of a 9x9 go game is about 126.3, which means if I use a good hash of board positions yielding twice that number of bits, I have a better than 50/50 chance of having no collisions. That is very good to know if you've got anything like a transposition table in a Go playing program.

<comment><USER8> You don't really need that precise an estimate.

      81 * 2log3 ~= 128.38

So, the number of legal positions is only a factor of about 5 down from the number of positions disregarding life.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I wonder if this sort of thing might be appropriate for grid computing, e.g. BOINC? There are plenty of mathematically minded projects.

[http://boinc.berkeley.edu/](http://boinc.berkeley.edu/)

</comment><comment><USER10> I don't understand this quote: "[determining the number of valid positions is] sadly unattainable for Chess, where determining if a given position is legal is the essence of a class problems known as Retrograde analysis.".

Is this due to some subtle distinction between valid moves/games and positions? Because since the starting position is given, and the rules are set, surely it's possible (in theory) to simply emulate all possible moves, and recording positions as one goes along, backtracking on cycles [ed: and on check mate]?

<comment><USER11> It seems that in chess, the (current) "best" way to figure out whether a move was legal is through retrograde analysis (1). As you can imagine, this becomes very expensive, very fast. Not only that, but the current position may be legal in chess given some previous conditions, but illegal given others (consider Castling). Therefore, given no extra information, you may not be able to tell whether a given chessboard is legal without being given the entire history of the board as well.

Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about, just googled retrograde analysis

1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrograde_analysis](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrograde_analysis)

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure what ruleset OP is using for their analysis, but with superko in place you would also need the entire history of the board to know if a move is valid.

<comment><AUTHOR> Although rulesets might differ on what is considered a legal move, they all agree on what is a legal position: one where every connected group of stones has liberties (empty adjacent point). Furthermore, in all rulesets you can reach any legal position by playing legal moves (and passes) from the empty starting position.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> _Following 9 months of computation and 4 petabyte of disk IO on a Dell PowerEdge R280 server_

I wonder if the time could be improved by optimising the programs some more, since at this scale constants matter a _lot_. The amount of memory needed might not be reducible but optimising a tight loop and reordering it to take advantage of cache effects could yield nontrivial speedups.

Taking advantage of the very wide new instructions in recent CPUs might also be worth it, instructions which compilers often have difficulty figuring out how to use effectively:

[http://davidad.github.io/blog/2014/02/25/overkilling- the-8-q...](http://davidad.github.io/blog/2014/02/25/overkilling-the-8-queens- problem/)

<comment><AUTHOR> Most time is spent normalizing, encoding, decoding, and sorting so-called border states, compact 18*3-bit descriptions of all information needed about a partial board position to determine its legal full-board completions. This code is fairly optimized, but it's possible that a small factor could be gained by expert analysis. Even so, there's little to no room for reducing the amount of disk-IO, so the end-result might be that the problem becomes more IO bound than CPU bound.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> So, given all the positions, can you tell which one(s) are possible results of another position after another turn?

// did not know you couldn't do this for chess (paper even pointed to why)

<comment><AUTHOR> Are you asking whether it's possible to determine all possible 1-move predecessors of a given position?

If so, then yes, that is pretty straightforward. E.g. the last move was either a pass, or a move by White, or a move by Black. For a move by White, it was either a suicide, so could be on any point in an empty region enclosed by Black, or it was no suicide and is one of the points occupied by White in the given position, possibly having captured a Black group in any of the adjacent empty regions enclosed by White.

<comment><USER14> Yeah, that what I'm asking (in a really bad way). I wonder, given a list of positions, how long it would take to build the transitions between them. I would imagine 19x19 would be a "practically forever" type thing.

<comment><AUTHOR> It would take at least a nanosecond for each position. Given that 6x6 already has 62567386502084877, it would take at least 724 days. To take "practically forever", 7x7 more than suffices:)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> Another great resource about Go combinatory: [http://ps.waltheri.net/](http://ps.waltheri.net/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I want to learn Go. I would like to practice against a bot first before I get on KGS. What is a good Go program I can run on my Mac to practice against? The AI does not need to be very good at all since I am novice. Once I get familiar with rules, I will play online against players. What is a good Go client to play online on the Mac?

<comment><USER6> There is a way to compile GoGui so it is a mac app. Through it you can play against GnuGo (brew install gnugo), fuego (brew install fuego), or pachi (compile yourself). With it, you can also learn a lot by making an AI play starting at a certain move, or making AI's play against each other.

You can also buy Goban from the app store to play GnuGo or Pachi (both bundled), but it is a bit buggy (and not really better than the older free version). They do respond to bug reports though so it sounds like they are actively working on it.

Start out playing 9x9 against GnuGo. Give yourself a 9-stone handicap, you should probably win. Take away handicap stones until you can win with a 3 stone handicap.

In general you don't want to play an AI at less than 3-stone handicap or you will learn bad habits.

At that point, play against GnuGo 19x19 with a 9-stone handicap. If you are a beginner around 20kyu, you will find it a challenge to win.

I've been practicing consistently for the past couple of months. I do problems on goproblems.com or from a few iPhone apps. I've played a couple of games against ranked bots on kgs and am ranked 15kyu there since I beat a popular 16kyu-ranked bot. KGS is inflated through so I'm probably around 20kyu, still a complete beginner. I beat GnuGo 19x19 at a 9-stone handicap but not quite yet at an 8-stone handicap.

Once you are able to beat GnuGo 19x19 at a lower handicap then you can start playing against Fuego or Pachi. But at that point you should also already be playing humans regularly - it's a very different playing style in that you'll come across clearly bad moves that you will have to learn to recognize and take advantage of.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> For fun I did a search for approximations to the function with Eureqa. I get exp(0.0319x(naturalLogOfLastValue) + 1.056xn^2 - 0.184).

Some other approximations here: [http://i.imgur.com/w84aPWs.png?1](http://i.imgur.com/w84aPWs.png?1)

Note they are all in the log domain.

</comment><comment><USER18> > we need from 10 to 13 servers, each with at least 8 cores, 512GB RAM, and > ample disk space (10-15TB), running for about 5-9 months.

Is he sure about 512GB of RAM? That's a lot of memory. Even the 32-core memory-optimized AWS instances only have 244GB.

<comment><USER19> Where I'm currently working (computational neuroscience / data analysis) we've just had to upgrade our servers and 512GB is only just enough for some datasets. A couple of the labs nearby (genomics) share a cluster of ~10 machines with 1.5TB RAM each. So no, 512GB isn't stupidly high (though it's still uncommon!).

(Large SQL servers, etc, often have this much RAM)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Hello, we provide jobs for ESL teachers through [http://preply.com/en/skype/english-tutoring- jobs](http://preply.com/en/skype/english-tutoring-jobs)

</comment><comment><USER21> They got 57 legal position for a 2x2 game of go. They're counting all the symmetries. They're not pruning anything. _facepalm_

<comment><AUTHOR> Few people can believe that there are as many as 386,356,909,593 games on the tiny 2x2 board. Needless to say, nothing is pruned there either. A game could visit as many as 48 of the legal positions and have dozens of passes (but only 2 consecutive ones, which ends the game).

<comment><USER22> Well it "ends" the game but play can resume. Plus, there's the crazy hypothetical play in the way-over-complicated Japanese rules. I think, in theory, you can play multiple almost-compete games after the game is "over". Each hypothetical play is just to resolve one group, as I understand.

<comment><AUTHOR> Indeed, the Japanese rules are not suitable for mathematical analysis of the game; see [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_go#Counting_phase](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rules_of_go#Counting_phase)

That's why our paper "Combinatorics of Go" assumes the so-called Logical Rules at [http://tromp.github.io/go.html](http://tromp.github.io/go.html), which do end a game on consecutive passes.

<comment><USER23> I would also like to point out, for the benefit of anyone else here (just replying to you to clarify your point), that the Logical Rules referred to are commonly referred to as the Tromp-Taylor Rules, after John Tromp (the submitter and parent commenter) and Bill Taylor, who wrote them up as a simplified version of the New Zealand rules; and that these, in turn, are in the branch of Chinese-style, or area-scoring rules (counting the sum of stones on the board and territory surrounded for score), to contrast with Japanese and Korean style, or territory-scoring rules (counting the sum of territory surrounded minus captured stones for the score).

The reason that rulesets in the Chinese style branch are more amenable to mathematical analysis are that you can play the game until you have an unambiguous result about the life or death of a group, and thus these rulesets usually involve simply resuming the game and playing it out if there is any dispute about whether a group is alive or dead (or, for the logical rules, don't involve resumption at all, you just play it out and score it as is after two passes, with all empty points that reach two colors being counted for no one; since in area scoring games, ending the game before that point is mainly a convention for human players who don't feel the need to play all the way to the point of killing obviously dead groups).

Under Japanese style rules, playing within your territory to kill a disputed group may reduce your own score, so rather than just playing it out to the end, there are an elaborate set of conventions for determining the life or death of particular shapes. This elaborate set of conventions is much more difficult to represent mathematically.

The American Go Association rules of Go have an interesting hack to allow you to use Japanese-style territory scoring, but wind up with the same result as Chinese-style area scoring would give you, by having you actually give your opponent a stone as a capture when you pass, plus making the game-ending passes be two or three passes such that each player has the same number of turns. This preserves the benefit of area scoring, that any dispute on life or death can be resolved by resuming the game and playing it out until the situation is completely unambiguous, while still allowing the somewhat easier method of counting that territory scoring provides (filling in liberties with captured stones, and then just counting the remaining territory, and thus having to actually count to a lower number).

The Tromp-Taylor rules do make some adjustments for the sake of making it even more amenable to analysis that most other rulesets do not, such as allowing suicide. This doesn't actually affect the strategy in very many games, as it's very rare to encounter a situation in which a suicidal move would be the best choice, but it tends to make analysis a bit simpler as there is one fewer constraint to worry about. I feel like allowing suicide is more elegant, but it is only allowed in a few rulesets.

It is unfortunate that for such a simple game, there is no one agreed upon worldwide rule set. There are a couple of different parameters that you can tweak in a ruleset that give you a game that is very similar, but different enough in a few corner cases to make them different games; territory vs. area scoring (and with territory, the large number of conventions on life and death you need to make it work), simple ko vs. situational superko vs. positional superko, suicide vs. no suicide, counting points in seki, and komi (number of extra points for the second player to make up for the first-move advantage).</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Joel and Jeff talk with Uncle Bob - <AUTHOR> http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/02/podcast-41/

<comment><USER2> What's interesting to me here is the different response of Kent Beck and Bob Martin. Beck went ballistic, attacking Spolsky with little support for his positions. [Martin's response][1] was clever and humorous.

Kudos to Martin.

[1]: [http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2009/02/06/on-open- let...](http://blog.objectmentor.com/articles/2009/02/06/on-open-letter-to- joel-spolsky-and-jeff-atwood)</comment>


BBC World's Most Powerful - Steve Jobs vs Bill Gates [vid] - <AUTHOR> http://emonome.vodpod.com/pod/show_video/49113 <comment><USER2> A very well done comprehensive comparison. The conclusion is accurate for now - we'll see about 5 years from now :)</comment>


Ask YC: best ISP in Bay Area? - <AUTHOR>

I'm aware of Comcast (cable) and AT&T (DSL). Are there any others that are worth looking into? Which one do you think is the best from experience? What kind of prices did you pay? <comment><USER2> You'll find a lot of reviews and plan comparisons at <http://www.broadbandreports.com/search>

</comment><comment><USER3> comcast has pretty good deals -- the quality of the service depends mostly on how good the coax is in your residence. I only get 4MB even though I pay for 6. I tried increasing it to the 12MB service and still only got 4.

But latency is pretty low, DNS is pretty fast, and the service is up hte vast majority of the time.

I should add that I get > 1MB upload speed which helps when I need to send a file.</comment>


Mozilla Plans to Sell Ads in Firefox Browser - <AUTHOR> http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/02/16/mozilla

<comment><USER2> To quote form Mozilla's own PR 'Directory Tiles will instead suggest pre- packaged content for first-time users.'

Sounds an awful lot like toolbars.</comment>


How Employers Get Out of Paying Their Workers - <AUTHOR> http://priceonomics.com/how-employers-get-out-of-paying-their-workers/ <comment><USER2> Wage theft is quite a vitriolic term (and so might only be reasonably applicable to actual breach of contract), but I think I can reasonably make the claim that this is essentially a thing that happens to all workers. A lucky few upper middle class folks might be outside of this.

Examples:

Downtown minimum wage job. Impossible to afford downtown rent, resulting in a non-optional hour long unpaid commute.

Business travel staying overnight. Direct expenses dealt with, but no compensation for the hours spent away from family stuck in front of a hotel TV.

Retail job. Shift ends at store closing time. Shuffling off the last customer and closing and locking up ends possibly 20 minutes later.

I could go on. Most people I know basically think this stuff is 'normal' and that you are just being lazy or finicky if you refuse to do so (maybe you 'deserve' to lose your job).

This is basically what poverty is here... an extreme lack of time and state of stress or tiredness cauaed by ridiculous employment. Many minwage workers would genuinely be better off camping under bridges and reading books, if they didn't have families and social connections.

The bottom end of the labour scale really is a horrible place to be at. I think that wealthy right wing folk don't often really understand it in the correct way. I think the idea these people have is that the poor have, or at least have the option of, a life that is just like being rich but with less fun stuff. e.g. a bike instead of a car, a flat instead of a house, and so on.

The reality is that there exists a qualitative difference between being working and middle class in the sense that you are spending most of your mental cycles just trying to make ends meet at all.

<comment><USER3> Except for people on minimum wage, I don't agree that those really count as wage theft.

Say you forced employers to account for the time closing and locking the store or to compensate people for spending hours away from their family. What would happen is that the hourly salary would drop to account for that, since in reality the workers are already taking those into account (as you say, they already consider it normal - and therefore expect it) when they accept the job.

Except for minimum wage workers, they are just examples where the actual contract is an informal agreement, and not the piece of paper that was signed.

<comment><USER4> Of course they should get paid for locking the doors, minimum wage or not. You claim hourly salary would drop, but at places that pay people correctly, it doesn't. Say a store is open from 10 am to 10pm. You hire one person to work 8 hours in the middle of the day. They come in say at noon, work 8 hours and leave at 8. Someone else comes in at 2 and works till closing, say 10:30. They do an extra half hour to clean up and lock up, so they should get paid less?

<comment><USER3> I suppose in a shop where workers have a fixed schedule (e.g. noon to 8pm, 2pm to 10pm) that might happen, but the vast majority of retail jobs aren't like that.

According to surveys, besides personal experience, something like 80%+ of retail jobs have at least shifts, if not full on-demand schedules, so there's no set of workers that always close the shop and others that don't - they all do, some of the days.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> This is how employees get free stuff. The only thing that stopped them before was morality. When employers steal their tips, don't pay them, etc it makes stealing so much more justified to the employee.

</comment><comment><USER6> They left out the most egregious form of wage theft: taxes! Taxes (often called income taxes) steal wages from the hard working middle class on scale orders of magnitude larger!

<comment><USER7> How are those roads you're driving on? Did you go to school? What about the police force, did they ever do anything useful for you?

In most countries you'd have free access to medical assistance as well and quite possibly a state pension when you're over 65 as well as if you become disabled or simply out of work.

Taxes are not always spent efficiently which is a real problem and plenty of times they are used to be spent on things we don't actually need but on the whole you can't really argue that all taxes are theft.

<comment><USER8> Do you mean anyone stealing money from you and then using some percent of them to provide services for you is not a thief? This explanation do not explain why non-government entity doing the same thing is still a thief.

<comment><USER9> That is neither what the poster meant, nor what they said.

The poster did not state that taxes are theft, nor that they are stolen from you. Stealing is taking without the right to take, or the permission of the individual.

Whilst you may not like paying taxes or agree with them, I am fairly sure the government has the right to take them.

<comment><USER10> Not the other poster, but I am always bothered by the fact that, because I live in NH and work in MA, I have to pay MA state income tax. Now, because I DO use the roads there, and in the case of an emergency in that state I'd make use of the emergency responders I'm not completely opposed to paying any taxes to them. But to be taxed at the same rate as a resident does bother me. I cannot make use of public schools nor do I count as a resident for the purposes for in state tuition for MA's state universities. I wouldn't count this as "stealing" but I could definitely see how it would feel like that.

I'm also bothered by the fact that I am taxed by a legislature that I cannot vote on and I'd question their right to tax me without representation.

<comment><USER11> Work from home in NH, and have your employer pay you there through an HR firm like Trinet.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Google: 'At scale, everything breaks' - <AUTHOR> http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/cloud/2011/06/22/google-at-scale-everything-breaks-40093061/

<comment><USER2> It is always a pleasure to read from Urs Hölzle. I've been in touch with some minor spec of his work[1], but I'm always impressed by it.

[1] <http://research.google.com/pubs/author79.html>

</comment><comment><USER3> All the best (and fun) scaling issues is best solved by _hacking_. Is there really any proper decent methods out there that can actually take a company from 5 users a day to 5 billion without any problems at all? I'm aware that you could perhaps "foresee" it, and get a big data-center, and lots of hardware solutions -- but is this really the solution that's called an 'out of the box' solution?

Sounds like when Google gets a problem, they create something to fix that, which is pretty damn cool in my opinion.

<comment><USER4> As a google employee I can say it really is "pretty damn cool".

</comment></comment><comment><USER5> "...most applications don't use [Google File System (GFS)] today. In fact, we're phasing out GFS in favour of the next-generation file system that is very similar, but it's not GFS anymore."

what could this be? home grown? an open source project?

<comment><USER6> Colossus: see a slide about halfway through this presentation: [http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrust...](http://static.googleusercontent.com/external_content/untrusted_dlcp/research.google.com/en/us/university/relations/facultysummit2010/storage_architecture_and_challenges.pdf)

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> "We use tapes, still, in this age because they're actually a very cost- effective way as a last resort for Gmail. "

.. what kind of tape drives does Google use?

<comment><USER8> BFT... big freaking tapes. I wonder if it's really tape though. You can get 'tape' backup systems where the cartrige looks just like a tape, but it's actually a special hard drive. I wouldn't be surprised if that's it. Otherwise, I wonder how many miles (of tape) long my gmail inbox is?

<comment><USER9> According to one source I found[1], 60 meters of DAT tape holds 1300mb of data. That's 21.67mb per meter. My gmail inbox is 679mb, thats about 31 meters of DAT tape.

[1] [http://menehune.opt.wfu.edu/Kokua/SGI/007-2861-005/sgi_html/...](http://menehune.opt.wfu.edu/Kokua/SGI/007-2861-005/sgi_html/ch04.html#id5197689)

<comment><USER10> LTO5 hit's about 1.8GB per metre. Or about 3.6GB compressed.[1]

There's a reason that people say tape is still cost effective -- and it's not DAT.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_Tape-Open>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I love this comment: "The reason why we put it in is not physical data loss, but once in a blue moon you will have a bug that destroys all copies of the online data and your only protection is to have something that is not connected to the same software system." I think that is often overlooked when designing HA storage systems.

</comment><comment><USER12> Am a little bit surprised Google hasn't incorporated SSD more.

<comment><USER13> Too expensive, too prone to failure [http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy- solid...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/05/the-hot-crazy-solid-state- drive-scale.html)

<comment><USER14> SSDs are actually cheaper per IOPS.

Considering that everything we knew about hard disk reliability was shown to be wrong (by Google), I wouldn't be surprised if the same holds for SSDs.

<comment><USER15> It's hard to see SSD's being a clear win on the surface. It would be very interesting though to see if the cost begins to change when you consider power savings (much smaller than hoped, but they do exist), figure out how much they'd save on HVAC in the datacenters, etc.

<comment><USER14> Having worked on power-aware hybrid storage for the last two years, the power savings per GB is pretty much zero; there is significant W/IOPS savings but that still doesn't pay for the capital cost. Performance is really the reason to use SSDs.

<comment><USER15> per GB is an excellent point, I had not considered that.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Clustering with Hierarchical and Density-Based Algorithms (hands-on Workshop) - <AUTHOR> http://bigdatauniversity.com/events/ds-workshop-series-advanced-hands-on-machine-learning-clustering-with-hierarchical-density-based-algorithms/ <comment><AUTHOR> Today (September 17, 2015) at 6pm EDT in Toronto, or via livestream if you can't make it in person.</comment>


Goldman Sachs May Be Forced to Fundamentally Question Capitalism - <AUTHOR> http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-03/goldman-sachs-says-it-may-be-forced-to-fundamentally-question-how-capitalism-is-working?cmpid=google&google_editors_picks=true <comment><USER2> Can anyone elaborate on this point? I found the article too short and too technical for me to understand.

<comment><USER3> Profit margins are very high compared to historic trends. Why?

GS notes that _costs of production_ have been going down. Firms move jobs from parts of the world with higher wages, to parts with lower. Firms eliminate jobs through mergers.

GS notes that some _commodity demand_ has been strong as places like China develop.

Lowering costs and keeping demand strong has kept profits high, says GS.

After a time, that should end. Beyond a certain point, mergers are less likely to pay off. Beyond a certain point, there aren't many jobs left to ship to low-wage regions. At the same time, global demand for commodities is weakening.

Those trends should cause immediate drops in revenue, hence profit margins. As these drops take hold, the price of capital assets like factories or tankers of oil or silos of wheat should fall. This should result in job losses, wage reductions, and generally a spiral that further reduces demand, increases deflation, and shrinks profit margins.

Many would argue that deflation and collapse in the corporate profit rate should already be going on, yet it hasn't been. Why? (There are good explanations but this article doesn't talk about them.)

GS quipped, roughly, that if the profit margins don't fall, maybe that means capitalism is broken and doesn't work anymore.

\</comment></comment><comment></comment><comment></comment><comment>-

Not in that article but just FYI: A marxian argument can be made that the real rate of profit is, on average, already negative. If so, that is a sign that capitalism is, as GS suggests, maybe self-destructing at long last. The GS quip is, I think, kind of a wry nod to the marxian view.

<comment><USER2> Thanks for the explanation. Can we expect to see large financial firms throughout the US economy begin questioning the basis of capitalism? I am also interested in the explanations as to why deflation and collapse in profit rate is not occurring. Any resources you could point to would be appreciated!

<comment><USER3> [https://therealmovement.wordpress.com/2015/10/10/the- hidden-...](https://therealmovement.wordpress.com/2015/10/10/the-hidden- conflict-within-the-fascist-state-for-control-of-economic-policy-5/)</comment></comment></comment>


Infection Monkey – An automated pentest tool - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/guardicore/monkey <comment><USER2> Given a huge network (or multiple) this thing can do wonders on continuous network auditing. Yet, there should be some security switches, such as complete agent uninstalling, really secure communications with CnC (paranoid mode and above), and no persistent backdoors. Those things can introduce new vulns to the network.

After all, it is only meant to automate the classic identify-> try exploit loop. Good for me.

</comment><comment><USER3> what does this have that tools like metasploit, nessus, or openvas doesn't do?

most of pentest tools are all about the libraries of tests they can perform.

this to me looks like a glorified nmap unless i'm mistaken.

</comment><comment><USER4> I would be more careful in pentesting any infrastructure than letting a worm run loose on it.

There is a list of exploits this code is testing. Why not run the tests yourself instead of using each target as a launching point?

Unless you're testing 100k servers and don't have the horsepower to drive the tests, how could this be any faster?

</comment><comment><USER5> So basically this is a worm?

<comment><USER6> This is an attack simulation tool. It can be executed from its C&C server but also from other machines in your network. By that you can simulate different scenarios like: what would have happen if my web server is compromised; or what if someone steal credential of a member of the IT team

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> what would it take to turn this into a malicious tool?

<comment><USER8> Like many things, using it maliciously</comment></comment>


Secret luxury homes: how the ultra-rich hide their properties - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/13f76ce0-cc82-11e8-8d0b-a6539b949662 <comment><USER2> The wealth extractors and hoarders know that if the public that barely gets by with no money were to truely understand the extravagance of the greediest, they might face revolution. So this new landed gentry class must hide their extravagance from the poor public. I say reveal them wide open. Let it be understood how the rich behave. Let it be understood how much wealth is being extracted from the poor and concentrated for staggering wealth inequality. The world needs more things like the Panama Papers.</comment>


Ask HN: Recommended ways to get capital for a "non-startup" IT consultancy - <AUTHOR>

I've run a consulting business for a little bit over a year now. We have 3-5 solid, repeat clients, so we have some cashflow history (though we are by no means "raking it in" -- still only make barely enough to support myself and my family). and I am getting to the point where some capital would be really helpful in both handling what we have now and in growing to handle more.
What's the recommended way to get capital in this situation?
Banks are sketchy and questionable, I don't trust them at all. And I don't really want a loan because if things turn south I'd rather not be walking around with a huge debt over my head.
I also don't really want to deal with a bunch of financial formalities like stock, mainly because I don't have time to study or set up all of that.
I understand that I will probably have to do at least one of these anyway. Which is better? I am not an accountant or lawyer and have limited experience in loan-getting, corporate registration, private stock transactions, etc., and would like this to proceed with as little interruption or distraction as possible.
Where can I find some benevolent businessmen who would be interested in investing something, so I don't have to try for a loan right away? I live in Utah and my marketing materials are very Utah-centric. I know an investor here but I think he is a bad dude and want to stay as far away from him as possible.
Again, this isn't really a startup in the HN sense; this is a normal IT consultancy, we mainly do custom development but have some IT/admin stuff too. I do have plans for product-based startups, but I am trying to bootstrap with consulting because it is a much more straightforward endeavor. Once I have this sufficiently established that it is generating a good, relatively-passive salary for me, I will be interested in expanding into other businesses.
In my opinion this should be a pretty straightforward, typical business development deal. We have a cashflow history and have existed for a short while (slightly over one year) and the business could expand significantly if I had a bit of capital to hire some more contractors, etc.
All advice appreciated.
EDIT: This post is meant to be exploratory and help catalog options available for people in similar situations -- a small business that is starting to get pretty busy and would like to expand and have some additional cash-on-hand so that we can take better care of our current customers and garner up some new ones.
The two replies thus far seem to have read in a much more self-entitled tone. Sorry, my intention was not to sound self-entitled or naive; I am fully intent on compensating any investors either via stock or interest, I just want to know what the experienced business community here at HN suggests as the best resources to find interested parties, whether it's a bank, investment group, incubator, whatever, and how to go about the deal in a way that is least likely to disrupt or distract from the primary business. <comment><USER2> I'll be honest, I am very concerned with this posting.

You don't want a loan, and you don't want stock, you want some benevolent businessman to... Give you the money? Those normally don't exist, you know.

As for your business, how many consultants do you have? Are the consultants working 40 hours/week with these 3-5 clients you have? If they are, how are you having cash flow problems? If they are not, you have to focus on getting more clients before you get more contractors. You may want to expand rapidly, but you can't just throw money for more contractors and hope the clients come, because when the money runs out you'll be in the same place before, but now with a bunch of debt over your head.

<comment><AUTHOR> It's not that I don't want to give stock, I just don't want the hassle of setting it all up. From the outset, it looks like a big PITA filled with lots of paperwork and formalities involving consultations with accountants and lawyers. That is the downside to taking private investment in exchange for stock -- a loan is a much better plotted course with far fewer legal, organizational, and financial vagaries, but a loan also seems to have a much higher personal risk.

As I acknowledged in the OP, I will probably have to either go through the paperwork and get the stock all filed/configured or take out a loan from a big bank. I am merely looking for HN's advice as to whether it is better to get a loan or trade private investment for stock.

I am happy to give stock or pay interest in exchange for investment. It's just all the attached overhead in one of these situations that I'd prefer to avoid. So I don't want free money, I just want money in the most expedient and least disruptive way possible.

<comment><USER2> What about my other question, regarding how many consultants you have, and how much work they do?

If you go to a bank and ask for a business loan, they are going to want to see that you have sustainable positive cash flow. If they see things like consultants not working full time, they will want the fat trimmed (lose a consultant) or meat added (more clients) before they invest money, as they want to make sure you will be able to pay off the loan.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There is absolutely no reason you should raise money from outside investors for this type of business. You grow this business with sales, with more customers paying you for your services. If you think, yeah but if I had $500k of investment I could hire two sales people and two more techs blah blah blah then my guess is you will ending up wasting a lot of money and failing. Grow your company with the people and skills you have. Be frugal. Put cash in the bank... then when you're at the breaking point, hire a new person.. rinse and repeat. Then you still own 100% of the company, you have cash in the bank and can eventually afford to take some risks on your own products.

</comment><comment><USER4> _I understand that I will probably have to do at least one of these anyway. Which is better? I am not an accountant or lawyer and have limited experience in loan-getting, corporate registration, private stock transactions, etc., and would like this to proceed with as little interruption or distraction as possible._

So, let's get this straight: you are not registered as a corporation, and you don't have an accountant?

It sounds like you want to hire an advisor to walk you through this. Do you have any contacts (among your clients and colleagues, perhaps) who could put you in touch with an advisor? Failing that, are there any business incubators nearby, or the Small Business Administration?

One more thing: if you think that "banks are sketchy and questionable" and you don't trust them at all, I wouldn't be putting my hopes into finding "some benevolent businessmen."

<comment><AUTHOR> I am registered as a corporation (LLC) and I do have an accountant. However, my accountant is a consultant I retain for a few hours every few months to go over tax filings, and I am assuming that stock configuration and dispersion is a bit more complex than registering a LLC. Maybe I'm wrong.

This is still very much a small business, "mom-and-pop" thing. I would like it to grow to something a little less "mom-and-pop"-y, and additional liquid assets would assist greatly in doing that. Having some cashflow history and not going out of business in the last year, I thought that this might be possible at this point. If you don't think it is, that's fine, please let me know that I still have a while to go before anyone would want to invest.

<comment><USER2> IANAL, but I don't think you can have stock as an LLC, You'd need to be a C or S corp.

As for wanting to make it something bigger than a "mom and pop shop", that's fine, and you not going out of business last year is great, but you WILL go out of business if you try to expand with money from loans or stock if you don't have the clients to back it up. You are cash flow positive right now, work on getting more and more clients. Once you are at capacity for the work you can do, add on more contractors.

You won't (and shouldn't) get loans to try to boost up your business, you get loans by looking at trends in your cash flow (I am growing by 3 clients a month, but I don't have the ability to work that much), and getting loans based on that (Example: I've been making a steady $2k in profit each month for 24 months, growing at 500/mo. Based on that, I'm going to get a loan for $50k, and pay it back over the next 5 years.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> You are describing any service firm. Like a law firm. Aside from a line of credit to smooth out cash flow lumps you get capital by doing work and getting paid.

You don't have a capital problem. You have a client problem. Go get better clients. Ping me privately by email. I have first-hand experience with this situation.</comment>


Save the Last Remaining British Rail Hovercraft from Destruction - <AUTHOR> http://www.ianvisits.co.uk/blog/2016/01/31/save-the-last-remaining-british-rail-hovercraft-from-destruction/ <comment><USER2> To be correct, in the 1970s you could cross the Channel by SR.N4s operated by _either_ British Rail or its private-sector rival Hoverlloyd. They merged in 1981.

Anyway the story of these two remaining hovercraft is sad and the hype- headlines about 'evil housing developers' with their wrecking-balls doesn't help address a problem which is widespread in the UK museum community: neglect of large exhibits until an emergency arises.

The Hovercraft Museum ( _it 's more like a hovercraft graveyard, I've been there_ ) has notionally had them in their care since 2004 but in that time hasn't moved them to land it actually owns. They've been camped-out on someone else's land ( marked for housing development ), and the owner of the hovercraft hasn't been paying rent, and the Museum hasn't contributed to the rent either despite using the SR.N4s as their central attraction. Hence they have now been taken as payment for back-rent. Fair dues.

Therefore I don't particularly feel that the Hovercraft Museum is the best trustee for the future but they've left everything to the last minute and positioned themselves as the _de facto_ saviours.

Headlines and petitions never tell the full story.</comment>


Federal Reserve sees demand for cash after money market jolt - <AUTHOR> https://www.ft.com/content/daf6a50e-d9ec-11e9-8f9b-77216ebe1f17 <comment><USER2> Lots of people commenting in yesterday's thread that this is normal and that there's nothing to worry about, I for one am pretty nervous, this very sentence alone: "The Fed had not previously used its repurchase agreement auction mechanism outside of small tests since the financial crisis in 2008" scaries the hell out of me, as do all those commenters I mentioned above basically saying "this time is different".</comment>


Show HN: A tool that saved 750 founders from building useless landing pages - <AUTHOR> https://www.doIneedalandingpage.com <comment><USER2> Awesome finding.</comment>